Short, fat and unassuming, I have extended the boundaries of indifferent posting and spurious comment within the interweb community to previously unimagined levels of banality. This has been achieved without fear of retribution or negative comment so if you're interested in thought patterns that tumble around the inside of my head like old underpants in a washing machine then this is for you.

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Gary Amos

Wednesday, 30 July 2014

A short bus
ride from Arnhem takes you west to the very nice suburb of Oosterbeek, past the
St Elizabeth’s Hospital (now apartments) which was a significant landmark in
the battle. The bus stop for the Hartenstein is within the eastern line of the
British perimeter defences which begin
at the western edge of the village.

The statistics I’ve just quoted come from Martin
Middlebrook’s book and are included to give an idea of the way units almost
disappeared during the battle yet retained their will to fight. The term
‘missing’ includes those taken prisoner (including many wounded) and those who
simply disappeared which is an unfortunate fate for many soldiers.

The whole of
the perimeter is loaded with locations of unit positions and it would be worth
a full tour. Another point worth making is that the British positions were not
continuous lines of trenches, but rather groups of slit trenches often
separated by tend of yards, the gaps being ‘filled’ by firepower and aggressive
patrolling. Bear in mind though that it is not now as it was in September 1944
and many new homes have been built. Nevertheless, at the main Oosterbeek
crossroads not that much has changed, although many buildings have been
rebuilt. One significant building is a house (‘Quatre Bras’) which was defended
by 21 Independent Parachute Company and is the scene lf David Shepherd’s painting:

A short walk
west along the Utrechtse Weg is the Hartenstein Museum, which has to be one of
the best museums I’ve visited. It has been recently refurbished and it reopened
in April this year in time for the preparations for the 70th
anniversary and is a fine example of what can be done with an historically
significant building used to house an admittedly small, but important museum.

Front and rear elevations with balck and white photos of the buildings in Septtember 1944

The displays are excellent and the focus of the museum is first class. The
local population played a key role in the battle, providing intelligence as
well as guides (especially for the withdrawal) and unquestionably important
support for the hard pressed medical services. This is recognised in the museum
by interesting displays and, more significantly, audio accounts from civilians
who took part in the battle. Not forgotten is the ‘Hunger Winter’ of 1944/45
when Holland was isolated and in German hands.

The
Hartenstein is surrounded by a very nice park. The area behind the museum was
once the Divisional Admin Area for 1st Airborne division from 20
September as the building housed the HQ and Defence Platoon (went in: 142, dead:
14, evacuated: 70, missing: 58).

Just southwest of this space is a damage 17
Pdr which marks the approximate position of the artillery HQ and further back
are the tennis courts which housed the
German prisoners.

I stumbled across the following photo on the web of a 17 Pdr knocked out in Oosterbeek. and the damage to the gun shield and breech seems to be very similar to that on the gun above. Could they be the same 17Pdr?

A knocked out 17-pounder anti-tank gun,
named "Pathfinder", on the Benedendorpsweg to the east of the Church in Oosterbeek.

Sited at the eastern side of the museum is this 17pdr : No3 Gun, 'D' troop, 1st Air Landing Anti-Tank Battery, Royal Artillery. Commander was Sgt George Thomas. The gun was knocked out on 22nd September in Oosterbeek and Sgt Thomas and Bombadier John McCullock were killed.

Sited at the western side of the
museum is this 17pdr : No1 Gun, 'X' troop, 2nd (Oban) Air Landing Anti-Tank
Battery, Royal Artillery. Commander was Sgt Horace 'Nobby' Gee.

Across the
Utrechtse Weg is the Airborne Monument on what was known as the ‘Triangle’,
home for the Divisional Admin Area from 18 – 20 September.

It’s a hell of a
monument and imposing, although quite plain. A small wooded area immediately
west of the Triangle housed the HQ of the 1 Airborne Reconnaissance Squadron
(Maj C.F.G. Gough [POW], went in: 181, died: 30, evacuated 73, missing: 78).

Tuesday, 29 July 2014

So, as I
mentioned in an earlier post, Chris and I had just over a week in Amsterdam at
the beginning of the month. Lovely city and very nice people without exception.
We did most (but deliberately not all) of the touristy things and nipped across
to Haarlem for a day, but a bone of contention was a suggested expedition to
Arnhem by yours truly. I’d take a couple of guide books for the famous ‘Bridge
too Far’ battle, but I wasn’t convinced it was a good idea. My objection was
that, as Chris is still working and doing an increasingly stressful job, the
break was for her rather than me and it should be geared accordingly. Her view
was that Arnhem was only about 60 or so miles away and easily doable with the
excellent Dutch railway system and I’d been interested in the battle
since I was a kid. Common sense prevailed and off I went. I’ve been around the
block a few times and don’t get fazed easily, so the prospect of a trot across
Holland raised barely a ripple. However, I ignored one of my long held principles
which is “never assume”.

We’d decided
on Saturday 12th as the best day to go because there was a barbecue
at the apartment complex which Chris could attend (amongst other things) and
travel would be quieter at the weekend. It would also avoid any reduced rail
service on Sunday. Arnhem is only just over an hour away by train, I knew which
buses to get and the weather was lovely. What could go wrong?

I’ll tell you
what could go wrong. Dutch national railways (Nederlandse Spoorwegen – ‘NS’)
are in first class condition because of regular and preventative maintenance which
they do most weekends: the Dutch have a bit of a giggle about this I found out
later. So, instead of Weesp – Amsterdam – Utrecht – Arnhem as planned, it was
Weesp – Zwolle – Arnhem which is the Dutch equivalent of travelling from Manchester
to, say, Stafford via Leeds. Approximate travel time of, say an hour plus
extended to two and a half hours. Still, plenty to look at and Holland is an
attractive place. It also meant travelling through Apeldoorn which was the
location of the ‘Airborne Hospital’ set up by the Germans and where Dad was based
for a short time during the War.

To be honest,
I wasn’t that bothered. Because of the everlasting ankle problem, I’d only
planned to visit the bridge in Arnhem and then shoot out to Oosterbeek to see
the Hartenstein Museum and sniff around the Divisional Admin Area and adjoining
locations (if the ankle held out).

So, for the uninitiated, what’s this Arnhem thing
then? It was the furthest point of airborne phase of Operation Market Garden (17–25
September 1944), an only partly successful Allied military operation fought in
the Netherlands and Germany in the Second World War. It was the largest
airborne operation up to that time, the idea being that a carpet of airborne
troops would capture a series of bridges between the Allied bridgehead over the
Meuse-Escaut Canal at Neerpelt and the Neder Rijn (Lower Rhine) at Arnhem (‘Market’)
over which the ground forces would advance into Germany (‘Garden’).It was the
culmination of the broad/narrow front argument between Eisenhower/Bradley and Montgomery
whose aim was to batter his way into Germany over the Lower Rhine and head for
the Ruhr, Germany’s industrial heartland.

Several
bridges between Eindhoven and Nijmegen were captured at the beginning of the
operation but Gen. Horrocks' XXX Corps ground force advance was delayed by the
demolition of a bridge over the Wilhelmina Canal, an extremely overstretched
supply line at Son, and failure to capture the main road bridge over the river
Waal before 20 September. At Arnhem, the British 1st Airborne Division
encountered far stronger resistance than anticipated. In the ensuing battle,
only a small force managed to hold one end of the Arnhem road bridge and after
the ground forces failed to relieve them, they were overrun on 21 September.
The remainder of the division, trapped in a small pocket west of the bridge at
Oosterbeek, had to be evacuated on 25 September. And the rest, as they say, is
history.

Arnhem has
been pretty much rebuilt after the squabble for the bridge and the later
attentions of the Allied airforces so, although many of the street lines are
broadly similar to before the war, the only thing to see is the bridge, now
called the ‘John Frost Bridge’ which has been rebuilt along the lines of its
predecessor which was finally bombed by the Allies in October 1944 to stop
German reinforcements moving south. However, my first objective was the
Hartenstein, so off to the bus station. Be careful, there are two!

To try to make
some sense of all this I’ve broken these notes into five sections: this introduction, a
talk about Oosterbeek, a description of my adventures in Arnhem at the bridge,
some things to think about regarding the Arnhem element of the campaign and ending
with a few wargaming ideas. It’s certainly not a history of Operation
Market Garden or even the Arnhem phase
of the operation. It’s rather an outline of what I saw and something about
those who fought there. I haven’t gone into detail about the British, Polish
and German units because there simply isn’t the space (or time). Nevertheless,
anyone even slightly interested in this battle to read some of the excellent
books which have been written about it. I’ve listed a few in the final part,
but they’re what I consider a minimum. This is a complicated affair filed with continual
movements and reorganisations, conspiracy theories, bad generalship and bitter
recriminations so do read more about it.

(Yes, I know the paratroops in the photo are American and as for the formatting, we can only pray!)

Just been through a really
interesting three weeks which included a dead washing machine, an apparently suicidal
DAB radio, a crunched bumper (self-inflicted), a dead iMac (you won’t believe
the amount of stuff I didn’t get round to backing up!) and, an hour before we
were about to disappear to the airport, a blocked drain. Ah well, it’s not as
bad a time as some of you have been going through, but it’s been a genuine pain
in the nethers. Nevertheless, the good news is that the closing date for the
competition has passed and I can now announce the winner: NOBODY !

I hadn’t expected a tsunami of
entries, given that WWII probably isn’t everyone’s cup of wargaming tea, but
even the ONE I did receive was so wide of the mark I thought it was a wind up.
I didn’t think the questions were that hard. Judicious use of Google and
a bit of imagination should’ve given the answers pretty quickly, particularly
for the WWII buffs. Anyway, the answers are:

a)Although
not everyone’s best friend, this officer’s sense of humour saved many lives on
D-Day. Who was he?

Answer: Major General Richard Hobart GOC 79th
Armoured Division

Originally forced to resign, he became a lance
corporal in the Home Guard, but was later re -commissioned and appointed to the
command of 79th armoured, the division tasked with producing and
operating specialist armoured vehicles capable of performing tasks normally carried
out by combat engineers. He began to refine and further develop specialist vehicles
which became known as ‘Hobart’s Funnies’ or ‘Funnies’ for short: Sherman DD
(Duplex Drive) amphibious tank, Churchill Crocodile flame thrower tank, Sherman
Crab flail tank etc., etc.

b)Appropriate
name for an Airborne commander? Who was he and who did he command?

c)How
did England manage to make such an arse of their World Cup effort? Answers
should be kept to a maximum of 200 words.

Trick question – nobody knows and I’m
buggered if I do!

Now, as I mentioned earlier, we’ve just had a holiday
(arranged at the last minute around what Chris could get off work and what was
available/appealed) which was just over a week in Amsterdam. During this (and
following several serious discussions) Chris ordered me to get across to
Arnhem, which I did last Saturday. It was only about 50 miles away and, given
the really good Dutch rail system even I had to admit it would have been silly
not to – considerate husband see? Anyway, more of this in a subsequent post when
I’ve sorted the photos out, so watch this space.